Disconnect
Written by Wendy M. Grossman for ‘Tales from Cybersalon’, September 2021.
“What are you doing?”
“I need a new community,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t.
“What, like a self-help group?”
I love my cousin Celia, really, I do, but she has no idea how little she knows. “No. It’s my street…”
“Huh?”
I had just discovered that my Northern cousin Celia was so lost in the sophistication of southwest London that it took me three hours to get her home from IBM Euston. She was so helpless! She had no idea how to integrate routes across neighbourhood apps, and our local cash conversions completely defeated her. Apparently Fleetwood is still using British pounds and they pay with some kind of ancient tapping ritual.
“Have her to visit,” my aunt Marion had urged. “She never goes anywhere. She used to be so brilliant, but since the pandemic she just lives in that pub.” So now she was here and fiddling with a *laptop*?
“You mean you’re in a geoIRA?” she said.
“Uh…yes.”
“Well, that’s dumb.”
See? Total ignorance. The Communities Rights Act, passed in 2027, strengthens communities — it’s what the government said at the time, that communities proved their importance during the pandemic — and it allows us to be self-determining by bonding together in Independent Registered Associations (IRAs).
The Act creates three community types: geographical, local interest, and virtual. Geographical IRAs — geoIRAs — can opt out of council services and negotiate our own contracts for waste, recycling, and street cleaning, negotiate collectively for electricity, water, and gas, exploit “naming rights”, and exercise the “right to inclusion”. That one’s really important, so new members share the IRA’s values.
Our small cul-de-sac of 20 homes quickly voted to become a geoIRA. We then contracted with the company that owns our freeholds for what used to be council services, and the freeholder subcontracted to the council anything it couldn’t make profitable. Home care, for example.
Waste pickup is more efficient, and ending the council’s “townscape” classification lets the north-side houses install awnings in front so their houses are cooler in summer. The council is still a problem, though. It’s prosecuting us over the awnings.
Celia interrupted: “Hey, this map says your street name is Barclay’s North Avenue. That’s not the address you gave me.”
“Oh, the council screwed us,” I said.
Naming rights became a thing. My street accepted a small stipend to add “Barclay’s” to our Post Office street name. It only lasted a couple of months, until Barclay’s decided we don’t generate enough data and pulled out, complaining we didn’t have a CCTV camera.
Celia was at the window. “Doesn’t the video billboard drive you nuts?”
“I’m hoping a new IRA will get rid of it,” I said, staying focused on the screen. My personal data store didn’t support any of the apps I was using, so I had to copy and paste.
IRAs began commercialising in 2031. The Southwest London Association leased our street from the freeholder and like a lot of them began requiring us to share all their data. Now, these associations are consolidating, so you don’t always know where you’ll end up.
I was juggling five different calculations: 1) each community’s features; 2) my acceptability; 3) compatibility of values; 4) projections of each community’s business model and possible future ownership; and 5) an analysis of conflicts with my five other IRAs — two local interest, three virtual.
“I’m not finding much,” I said. “I think my social score is screwing me up.”
“What is it?”
“In 2028, the CRA was amended to require communities to ‘Know Your Members’ to eliminate fraud,” I said. Most IRAs outsource this to the banks and the three big credit-scoring services — Equifax, Experian, and Facebook, which bought TransUnion in 2026. “I have to submit a verified ‘social score’.”
“You’re like Aunt Marion, still thinks I’m a barmaid. I meant, what is *your* social score?”
“Oh..um…436,” I said. She looked shocked. “Look, they take off points for sleeping late, and I belong to this virtual IRA about the future of technology that they think is weird.”
“And?”
“And last year I only got three out of ten on a pop quiz on my neighbours’ middle names. Stop laughing!”
She looked down at her laptop and tapped a few keys.
“If you’re not a barmaid, what are you?”
“I work for Commugent. The pub rents offices with terabit broadband.”
My glasses crashed. “Hang on.” Please, please…OK. I’d only lost the last few fields. “I just need to concentrate for a minute.”
Celia was muttering something, but I tuned her out.
Suddenly she plonked her antiquated laptop on my lap. “There’ll be a code in your email from “Admin”. Type it in here.”
I was glad my friends couldn’t see. My screenful of accounts and calculators appeared on Celia’s screen in a single view I’d never seen before. She pushed a button to project it on the ceiling. My social score now read: 700.
“Did you do that?”
“I work for Commugent. I write this shit.”
“What is Commugent?”
“The fast-growing world leader in community management systems?” I still didn’t get it. “This is good, actually. I never get to talk to real users.” She stared at the display, and then shook her head. “Rejoin the council.”
“The council is for rejects. I just — my side of the street is going TikTok. I want — not *them*.”
Celia sighed. “How do people live in London? It’s so far from everything and it’s so pointlessly complicated… The Fleetwood council was so right.”
I had read about this. Regressive Northern councils called the Act a project to undermine local authorities. When it passed they put non-compete clauses in their supplier contracts. The three biggest geo-operators — TikTok, Wetherspoons, and QAnon Holdings — have referred them to the competition authorities. The case is stuck in the judicial system with our awnings.
“The Act will come for you, too,” I said. “Eventually.”
